Survey

Let’s be honest, we, or at least this Instinct Writer, are getting just as tired as you all of these continual online polls that are kind of surveys which are kind of studies. Most often than not, these polls have such a small sample size that they can’t actually be considered representative.

Bespoke Surgical, which aims to create social insight through research, tried to look at the preparation practices between sexually active gay men and straight women especially concerning anal sex.

Using an online survey, Bespoke Surgical contacted 600 Americans of all ages and asked them multiple questions. Half of the respondents were gay men, and the other 300 were straight women.

While my initial response was to question why straight men were left out of the survey (because their exclusion means the researchers don’t care for info on penetrative partners during anal sex and thus create a problem with top and verse gay men), I’m was happy to find the researchers at least asked about gay men's sexual positions.

Researchers first asked for the preferred sexual positions of the 300 respondents and found a fairly even split (39% tops, 33% verse, 29% bottoms).

They then asked gay men how often they have anal sex. The results found that 39% of respondents had anal sex a couple times a week, 24% a couple times a month, and 13% had it daily.

Bespoke Surgical then asked how the gay men prepared for anal sex. The results found that 42% of the 300 gay men reported using an anal cleanser before sex at least on fairly frequent basis. Then 38% rarely do while 21% said sometimes.

They also found that the gay men who have anal sex daily were 1.3-2.1 times more likely to always use a cleansing product. Meaning, the less anal sex respondents had, the less often they would use a product to clean themselves.

To round out the questions for gay men, Bespoke Surgical asked them about other sexual practices. 37% of respondents said they always use a condom while 21% said occasionally and 16% said never.

Also, 41% of the gay male respondents said they’ve experienced tearing during anal sex. Lastly, 45% said they don’t use sex toys for anal sex, while 55% said they do. Within that group who have used sex toys, 41% said they use it to prepare for anal sex.

Again, this survey isn’t so much to be true representation for gay men, but act as a basis for us to understand the topic and research more from here. Right now, the point of the survey is to get us thinking and talking about the topic.

What are your thoughts on the results? Do they reflect your sexual practices? What would some of your answers be to these questions? Let us know down in the comments.

Apparently, more than one half of gay men have cheated on a partner (or FS Magazine thinks so).

The Health Equality and Rights Organization (or HERO for short) and FS magazine conducted a survey that found that result. The survey, which was mostly focused on infidelity, asked 961 gay and bisexual men about their relationships.

The results found that 58% of respondents said their partner had cheated on them before. In addition, 52% said they’d cheated themselves before. Within that, 45% said their partner still doesn’t know and 61% said they’d continued the affair multiple times without informing their partner.

The questions also set up difficult conversations like what you could possibly bring home after cheating, such as contracting an STI. 17% of respondents said they had gotten HIV or some other STI from an affair.

This also isn’t just a problem for couples in more traditional relationships. 40% of respondents in open relationships said they or their partner had broken the rules of the relationship before.

Ian Howley, who’s the chief executive of HERO, reflected on these results and insisted that they show a need for more communication between gay couples, especially concerning sex.

“What’s clear to us from the results of the survey and what gay men told us about their experiences is that some gay men are making the same mistakes regarding communication, trust and boundaries.”

“There’s huge issue of gay men not being able to talk to one another about what they want sexually.”

He continued: “Of course sex is important for any relationship to work but you cannot and never will be able to meet the needs of someone 100% of the time. And we are foolish to put that pressure on ourselves.”

“If you are lucky to find someone that does it for you, is there for you emotionally, physically and treats you with the respect you deserve, then you must work on the relationship. Letting a relationship die because of sex is silly. More often he will work with you and you can work together to explore options that will keep your relationship tight.”

That said, let's not forget that this is one online poll. On top of that, the sample size is incredibly small. These results, while interesting, do not really reflect gay and bisexual men.

While the survey is interesting to talk about and start discussions, it isn't one to use as true representation of gay men. We'll leave that to an actual study (or a much larger survey at the least).

But, if you’re interested in checking out the issue of FS Magazine, you can download it for iOS, Android, or Kindle.

Due to the ever increasing amount of gay couples being refused service by businesses with the excuse of “religious freedoms” these three researchers wanted to know the public’s true opinions on the matter. As such, they used original data from a US national survey to answer the questions below:

“Does support for service refusal apply only to religious beliefs or extend to other opinions?”

“Does support for service refusal apply only to self-employed individuals or extend to closely held corporations?”

“Does support for service refusal apply only to same-sex couples or extend to interracial couples?”

The 2035 respondents, who filled out the survey between March 11 and March 19 of 2015, were shown examples of a couple being denied a service but with varying scenarios in order to gauge opinions on each different situation.

“[Michael and Jason, a gay couple/Michael and Jennifer, a black man and a white woman] are getting married and want to have photos taken to send out with their wedding invitations. They went to a [self-employed photographer/photography studio in a large chain store] because they heard [he was the best photographer/it was the best place] in the area for engagement portraits. The photographer refused to take their picture. He explained that [(because he is religious/although he is not religious)/(because the corporate chain owner is religious/although the corporate chain owner isn’t religious)] [he/the owner] doesn’t approve of [gay/interracial] marriage.”

Respondents were then asked to give their opinions on whether the service provider should be allowed to refuse services to the couple (in whichever situation they had just read).

The results found that 53% of respondents support the refusal of services to the gay couple and 39% are ok with the refusal of interracial couples.

In addition, the respondents are more in favor of a self-employed photographer rejecting a couple than a big corporation. In fact, the number was twice in favor of a self-employed photographer (61% to 31%).

And then, the researchers say that respondents support the refusal on religious bases just slightly more than nonreligious ones (47% to 45%). As such, they say that the reasons of refusal are basically inconsequential.

"In marked contrast to the couple-type and business-type manipulations, whether the service refusal is for explicitly religious or explicitly nonreligious reasons appears inconsequential."

That said, they also found that while their respondents didn’t care for the reason that gay couples were rejected service, more people cared to distinguish the reasoning for rejecting an interracial couple.

Lastly, each respondent had the choice to elaborate on their opinions. While each response couldn’t be laid out for us, the researchers shared the general consensus of these elaborated thoughts.

"Several people who read the same-sex couple vignettes—and thus were unaware of the parallel interracial couple vignettes—explicitly equated service refusal to gay couples with historical denial of services to African Americans."

"In contrast, the plurality of respondents who supported the businesses’ right to refuse services framed their support in terms of individual rights and libertarianism. Others who endorsed refusal expressly said they supported the businesses’ right to refuse because of their own opposition to same-sex relationships."

"Some people supported the businesses’ right to refuse, although they disapproved of the refusal. This view was common among those who support same-sex marriage, who often assumed that customers would boycott discriminatory businesses. To them, the free market will penalize discriminatory businesses to the extent that they will either eventually provide services or be put out of business."

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Matt Cain, the Editor-in-chief of Attitude Magazine commented on these results and said that they were “troubling.”

“It backs up the experience so many of us have had on hook-up apps or the dating scene. And it reflects the difficult relationship so many of us have with our masculinity.”

“But why should we let expectations about how we should look or act as men make us feel bad about ourselves?”

Keep in mind that Attitude started this survey as a part of their mission to tackle attitudes towards masculinity in the gay community.

That bias could have directly affected the result of the survey in the vein of questions worded to make one answer seem more offensive or wrong than another one. (Though doing so clearly didn't affect the results going in the other favor).

In addition, the results found there is a significantly higher stigma towards PLWHIV in the UK compared to other countries in Europe.

44% of UK respondents say there’s a stigma towards long-term relationships/marriage. Meanwhile, only 25% thought so in Germany, 28% in France, 17% in Spain, and 12% in Italy.

That said, the survey did not explore why these numbers exists.

Perhaps, the change in access to knowledge about HIV and PLWHIV has caused this difference. Maybe a lack of contact with PLWHIV can cause an increase or drop in stigma. Without more research, it’s hard to know.

In addition, the survey found that 31% of people living with HIV expect to be single. The fear to commit or admit status is probably a big factor in this statistic. (But again, no attempt at making connects were made in the actual survey).

The survey also found that people living with HIV also expect to live shorter than people without.

The point of the survey was to gather data and not so much to find connections in that data. That said, the data clearly shows a more negative outlook on life for people living with HIV.

The Gay men’s health charity GMFA recently released the latest issue in its FS magazine, and in it they released information from a survey about barebacking in the gay community.

The way they went about the survey was to ask 523 gay and bisexual men a series of questions such as when was the last time they had sex, when they were last tested, and what risky sex means to them.

The results of the survey found that:

65% of respondents said that they did not use condoms the last time they had anal sex.

8% of men in that earlier percentile said they or their partner were on HIV-prevention drug PrEP.

14% of the 523 men surveyed said they had bareback sex with someone who is HIV-undetectable.

Meanwhile, 32% of the men did not know if their sexual partner is HIV-negative before having sex.

11% of men who took part said they have bareback sex and did not worry about the risk.

While, 27% of respondents admitted to having a “risky sex life”.

In response to these results, Ian Howley, the Chief Executive of GMFA said:

“The results of the survey has shown that sex is complicated and there is no one size fits all safer sex strategy.

“First we need to define what is risky sex in this day and age.”

“Safer sex in 2017 is more complicated that it was twenty years ago when your only options were condoms or abstinence as a way to protect yourself from HIV and STIs.

“The advancement of treatment, the fact that gay men who are on HIV treatment and have an undetectable viral load so can’t pass on HIV, added to the increased number of gay men who are taking PrEP, means that gone are the days when sexual health education was just about telling people to use condoms.

“We now must do more to increase gay men’s knowledge about all the options open to them.”

“Of course condoms still play an important role in preventing other STIs and should still be a major part of a safer sex strategy, however, it’s not a one size fits all approach any more.

“We need to meet gay men where they are in their lives.

“We need to keep on pushing the message that there is more than one safer sex strategy.

“We need to increase people’s knowledge about PEP, PrEP and what HIV-undetectable actually means in the real world.”